Title: Darius the Great is Not Okay
Author: Adib Khorram
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2018
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Children's Fiction
Pages: 312 (physical copy, paperback)
Read Time: 4 days (dedicated reading)
.:: Author's Summary ::.
Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life.
Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.
.:: Personal Summary ::.
Darius Kellner doesn't fit in anywhere and can't quite connect with the world around him, and even though he has a cultural identity being of Persian descent he doesn't feel quite Persian enough. In fact, he doesn't feel like enough for anything anywhere. After learning that his grandfather is unwell, the Kellner family flies out to Iran. Darius isn't expecting anything to be different, and actually thinks it might get worse since the culture doesn't see mentall illness in a positive way. Having clinical depression is hard to hide. However, when he meets his family and befriends a neighbor boy, Sohrab, he starts feel more Persian and more like Darius Kellner than he ever has before.
.:: Overall Rating ::.
~ 5 out of 5 ~
I was blown away by the amount of tears I shed reading this book. Adib Khorram so perfectly captured the mental processes of someone with depression that I found myself shedding tears as if someone turned on a faucet. I didn't know I was crying until the tears dripped from my chin onto the page. His story was so real, raw, and relatable that I felt in my bones, in my soul. He wrote these characters with a level of expert skill that I can only dream of achieving myself someday. Without a doubt in my mind, I'll be a better writer for having read Khorram's work.
Additionally, there were technical brilliance to the work that was pervasive. From repeated phrases, to foreshadowing, to perfectly titled chapters, to the complexity of plot, this story is the epitome of modern writing with classical skill. While sharing with the readers a well written story, Adib also showcases what it's like to struggle with mental health and a cultural identity crisis. When you cannot connect with your roots and experience your culture, it can disillusion you as a person and leave you feeling less than peers who share your heritage. It is an unimaginable barrier that too many people suffer through in their lives. In the back of the book there is a Q/A section where Adib Khorram talks about his own heritage and how he's never been back to Iran because of the travel restrictions and complications surrounding a visit there. He hopes for foreign relations to improve so that he may someday go - but it is only a wish. Thousands and thousands of people feel that way, and the way that Adib shows that longing and confusion through Darius Kellner is amazing.
I did not think a book could surprise me and move me as much as Mexican Gothic did earlier this year, or the way Perks of Being a Wallflower did when I read it years and years back, but I have absolutely fallen in love with this story and am absolutely purchasing the sequel as soon as I can because these stories about Darius are a gift to this world.
.:: Technical Writing ::.
~ 5 out of 5 ~
This review will probably be quite boring, if I'm honest, because there's no critiquing that I can think of with this text. I've tried! I've been sitting on this review for nearly a week since finishing the book and I just cannot think of a damn thing that I wish was different.
Correction. I kind of wished for a different ending, but that's the fanfiction writer in me at work.
I think the thing I enjoyed most about the technical writing that Adib Khorram did was that, since it was first person narrative, he was able to show the complexity of introflection without dialogue or journal entries. The use of dialogue often comes down to style, preference, and genre. I definitely have felt that you see more dialogue in Young Adult and children's writing than adult and mature genres like science fiction and high fantasy. Even though there are chapters wher Khorram has large chunks of dialogue, you do not get overwhelmed by it and it doesn't disrupt that natural inner monlogue of Darius as the narrator. In many ways, it feels like you are thinking and existing with Darius and his experiences, even though its told in past tense.
I also wanted to note, again, that Khorram that does a phenomonal job showing emotions through the way he writes Darius' mental illness. There's a line from the book that talks about how the negative aspects of depression, with one line reading "Suicide isn't the only way you can lose a person to depression" (Pg. 286). The nuance is pristine and perfect in every single way.
.:: Creative Content ::.
~ 5 out of 5 ~
As a person who doesn't remember a time before depression and anxiety, I've read a number of books dealing with mental health topics like suicide, self-harm, addiction, abuse, and overcoming trauma. There was always a little something here or a little something there, or a very specific aspect of the book that I connected with, but only a small handful of books that I really understood wholly. This book is now on that list. I cannot believe just how intensely accurate the human mind was shown, espcially in the ways of high functioning depression where you can do the things you need to do to survive, but that's all it is: surviving. For that reason alone, the creativity behind it is exquisitely immaculate and, obviously, perfect.
Building from there, though, is that this book does a great job of showcasing a male with mental illness and framing masculinity in a different way. Darius is emotional, soft, and compassionate beyond words. It also showcases a friendship between two males that is loving and transparent in a way that is not often showcased in any form of entertainment media. It's also something that the author specifically identified as an important part of the story itself, which just adds to the creative power in writing his characters in this way.
.:: Recommendation Rating ::.
~ 5 out of 5 ~
I read this as a part of my #ReadWithMe reading challenge for March's theme, which is to read about culture different than my own. I don't have a culture, but I also struggled with reading in February, so I was looking for fiction texts that showcased different cultures and this was one that I picked out right away. The title, the book cover, the summary - on that alone I recommended it to my friends. Since reading it, I've demanded my friends to read it and talk about how amazing it was whenever it comes up.
Honestly, I can't believe I existed before reading this book. That's how good it is. Not only did I learn more about Iran and Persian culture through this story, but it continued to provide perspective about how powerful and encompassing a culture identity is to someone. Being an American living in a very white part of the country is limiting in how much cultural exposure I've had, especially having grown up in an inherently racist community. It took years to unlearn those biases and behaviors that I saw in my childhood and I spend a lot of my time trying to be culturally sensitive and informed. A specific population that is present where I live now is Middle Eastern / Indian families that work here on contracts for big bussiness. I've always admired the men and women that I've met who shared their Indian culture with others. It was beautiful in a way that I know I will never personally understand, but it was a huge motivator in the types of cultures I wanted to explore through reading this month. Middle Eastern cultures are demonized in American media and politics, unfortunately, so reading about Iran and Persian heritage through Darius was powerful. It reminded me just how influential fiction writing can be in the ways of informing readers about social expectation.
The world can change with your words, and it is resoundingly clear to me that I am an improved human after reading Darius the Great is Not Okay.
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